A liberal case for Donald Trump: The lesser of two evils is not at all clear in 2016

Let’s quickly begin with Walker Bragman……wait, seriously? *returns to Salon and clicks around his author page.* Hmm, “Hillary is only Republican lite”,….ah, here’s “Fine, give the GOP four years,” wonder if he just expects all the Supreme Court justices to be fine and stay in office until 2020 or if he just doesn’t care? Oh, wait. I missed “Hillary supporters present a false choice.” Hmm. Oh god, sorry about that. I got lost in his Salon history consisting of nothing but Hillary hit pieces. Anyway, yeah, his name appears to be Walker Bragman and his is “a liberal case for Donald Trump“:

That said, now that the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is effectively over, with the former secretary of state essentially guaranteed the nomination, many liberals and progressives are preparing, once again, to vote for the lesser of two evils. The choice may not be as clear as some Democrats believe — especially if Democrats can take back the Senate and assure themselves of a check on a GOP House.

*raises hand*

Why the living fuck would we be expecting the Democrats to take back the Senate if the Presidential election results in a Donald Trump victory?

Like it or not, the Supreme Court needs to count for much more than anyone willing to concede 4 years to a GOP president is counting it. GOP presidents have had a much stronger hand in shaping the present court, and that court has been horrible for those wish for a political system they can trust. It isn’t all about reproductive rights, although if you honestly think we aren’t one judge away from allowing states to outlaw abortion, and if you really believe that they would stop at just abortion once they won that battle, then I envy you your ignorance supported bliss. The current court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Citizen’s United was their decision. Union cases sit at 4-4 currently. The Supreme Court matters. It may be the most important result of the upcoming election. Yet all of these “Sanders or Bust” or “HRC over my dead body” columns act like it’s no big thing. I don’t get it. Do they just think all the liberal justices are in perfect health? Misogyny based on the ignorant belief that the only reason progressives care about the court is abortion access? Forgetting that a Bernie Sanders presidency would more than likely see the Supreme Court rule every second move he made unconstitutional? Refusing to believe in the third branch of government? I just don’t get it.

Anyway, since any conceivable Trump presidential victory would result in the GOP retaining the House and Senate, I really don’t see the need to read any further. Feel free if you want though. When you’re done, join the rest of us below…..

To the Honorable James B. Comey, Jr. and all the good people at the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

Yeah, that’s all I can bring myself to quote. I’m sorry, it’s kinda embarrassing, like that time Fonzie got roped into performing a water ski trick over a large fish. The “TL;DR” version? It’s a Bernie supporter who finally realized that the only way Sanders is going to get the Democratic nomination this year is if the FBI indicts Hillary before the convention, so he goes to the FBI, telling them how everyone else thinks they are total jokes who will never move out of their parents basements or get a date, but he respects the FBI as a proud, patriotic, professional organization with VERY LARGE PENISES who should be held up as everything that’s right with America, and oh by the way if you would PLEASE INDICT HILLARY OMG PLEASE PLEASE I’M BEGGING YOU PLEASE!!!!

The saddest thing is that those of you who decide not to read the whole letter will never realize exactly how close my “TL;DR” summary actually is to the original.

SB 3 would allow patients with qualifying conditions to use and safely access medical cannabis with their physicians’ recommendations. Up to 25 Department of Health-permitted growers and processors would produce medical cannabis, which could be dispensed by up to 50 dispensaries, each of which could have up to three locations. The qualifying conditions include cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, PTSD, seizures, autism, sickle cell anemia, and intractable pain if conventional therapies or opiates are contraindicated or ineffective.

With Pennsylvania as the latest addition, nearly half of the states across the US allow legal medical marijuana.

One thing left out of the article is the fact that smokable marijuana will not be medically available.

The only kind of marijuana that would be approved initially included pills, creams and oils that can be used in a vapor.

But smoking would be prohibited, which is interestingly in contrast to the New Jersey law, which only allows for whole cannabis flowers and buds.

Doesn’t surprise me. The government still runs our liquor stores. This state is so ass-backwards.

On the plus side however, at least something has been legalized for those people who it can help. For people like me, however, who are for total legalization while remaining skeptical of many of the claims of cannabis’ medicinal value, I see this as another sign that PA will be among the last states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

Anyway, I have to go. I think I feel myself coming down with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Severe chronic or intractable pain of neuropathic origin or severe chronic or intractable pain in which conventional therapeutic intervention and opiate therapy is contraindicated or ineffective

Sickle Cell Anemia

(I’m joking about coming down with IBS. If I want medical THC oil to vape, I have chronic severe pain from the approximately 50 fractures I suffered to both of my feet in the year 2000. And I can not be prescribed opiates for it. Believe me, I don’t need to make up a condition.)

Trump Says Something Anti-Abortion Activists Have Been Drooling for Decades to Hear a Politician Say, Anti-Abortionists Promptly Do What They Do Best: Lie.

Yeah, that’s a mouthful. But since this is Foster Disbelief and not The Daily Mail, I decided to scrap it and start over.

For some reason Donald Trump, the(gag) front running candidate for the Republican presidential (I just threw up a little) nomination, had a sit down interview with Chris Matthews the other day. I didn’t watch it. I actually stayed as far away from the television as I possibly could when MSNBC aired the interview. No thank you. I can suffer through a Trump interview to see if anything is newsworthy. I can tolerate watching Chris Matthews on MSNBC because I respect the other voices that make up MSNBC’s political coverage. Matthews interviewing Trump is just a black hole of idiocy that I won’t even pretend I would willingly put myself through. (Seriously, listening to Matthews go on about the possibility of a Clinton/Kasich unity ticket during one night of MSNBC’s primary coverage had me contemplating either switching to Fox News or puncturing my ear drums with an ice pick. He’s the liberal answer to Bill O’Reilly. Something that, along with the ideological purity police, is something we really don’t need.)

At a taping of an MSNBC town hall that will air later, host Chris Matthews pressed the Republican presidential front-runner Trump for his thoughts on abortion policy. Trump said he’s in favor of an abortion ban, explaining, “Well, you go back to a position like they had where they would perhaps go to illegal places, but we have to ban it,” according to a partial transcript from Bloomberg Politics.

Matthews asked if there would be a punishment for women who received abortions if they were made illegal. Trump responded, “There has to be some form of punishment.” He elaborated that the punishment would have “to be determined” and the law will depend on the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation battle and the 2016 election.

Matthews, to his credit (I feel dirty for typing that), was all over Trump like a bad toupee rather than allowing the reality show star to word salad his way out of the question. Progressives immediately held it up as yet another extremist view held by Trump, Wow, that’s a surprise. Liberals were going to disagree with Trump’s position on abortion no matter what he said. Trump’s running as a Republican, which means he has to be “pro-life.” (What a great political system we’ve built on the corpses of the founding fathers. Sigh.) What was surprising was the response by anti-abortion activists as they rushed to distance themselves from Trump.

The central goal of the pro-life movement may be to eliminate abortion, but to the vast majority, the responsibility doesn’t lie with the woman getting an abortion, but the doctor who is providing it.

Even the most staunch pro-life groups were quick to express their disappointment with Trump’s initial statements. Susan B. Anthony List and March for Life, two of the country’s most prominent anti-abortion groups, tweeted that women who have abortions need “healing and compassion” and that punishment is “solely for the abortionist who profits off of the destruction of life.”

Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League and a long-time pro-lifer, says that the responsibility of an illegal abortion “should fall on abortion providers, not the women who turn to them in desperation.”

“If Donald Trump is going to run successfully as a pro-life candidate, it’s time he started listening to the pro-life movement,” he says.

Fellow GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz echoed Scheidler’s sentiments, saying in a statement that being pro-life isn’t just about the “unborn child,” but the mother as well – something that is “far too often neglected.” The movement, he said in a statement, is about “creating a culture that respects her and embraces life.”

“Of course we shouldn’t be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world,” he said.

Me thinks the activists doth protest too much. The only reason pro-life people claim they don’t want the woman punished is because that is a horrifically unpopular position in the larger population. I am sure some anti-abortion activists honestly do not want the woman punished beyond being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, just as I’m also sure some of them really want to reduce the amount of abortions and would support proven programs such as Colorado’s IUD program, and some of them think those who shoot abortion providers are murderers.

And if the majority of anti-abortion activists share those beliefs, if they truly want to end abortion and not punish women for being sexually active, if they’re “pro-life” position prohibits the assassination of providers and the bombing of clinics, then those people need to make that clear and stop providing cover for the more extreme members of their movement.

It is the same argument I make to “moderate” Christians. Shrugging your shoulders and saying that the gay haters aren’t “real Christians” doesn’t cut it. In fact, going from the Bible, most of the time the fundamentalists have more textual support for their position. Hey “moderate pro-lifer?” When you call abortion “murder” and insist it is the “American Holocaust,” you are giving coverage to the clinic bombers and doctor killers, just as the moderate Christian who argues for the infallibility of the Bible protects the anti-gay bigots.

While Newman never explicitly calls for the execution of women who have had abortions, as he does abortion providers, he makes very clear that he sees these women as equally culpable for the supposed crime.

He tells the story of a woman in California accused of paying two men $1,000 and some “sexual favors” to murder her husband. Both the woman and the men who executed the hit, he reports, received the same sentence. How, Newman asks, is this different from abortion?

There was no outpouring of public concern from the community declaring her a victim of society. There were no help centers set up to give aid to all future contract killers so that they might find alternatives to murdering their husbands. The churches did not welcome her on the condition that neither of the parties would discuss the crime. There was no legislation brought forward by the National Organization for Women to pardon her and all future murderesses. There was no sympathy publicly expressed for her — only the satisfaction that comes from witnessing justice.

Why, then, do we consider any differently the women who seek to hire killers to murder their pre-born children? Why the hesitancy to say that not only the mothers, but also the fathers who willfully abort their babies, are guilty of murder? Why is there such outrage expressed at the notion that those who know of the crime but do not intervene, like most of the churches in America, share a portion of the guilt?

Who holds the fathers, the mothers, the neighbors, the pastors, and the bystanders guilty? Who would dare?

God can! God does!

…

By comparing abortion directly to any other act of premeditated contract killing, it is easy to see that there is no difference in principle. However, in our society, a mother of an aborted baby is considered untouchable where as any other mother, killing any other family member, would be called what she is: a murderer.

“I am grateful to receive the endorsement of Troy Newman,” Cruz said. “He has served as a voice for the unborn for over 25 years, and works tirelessly every day for the pro-life cause. We need leaders like Troy Newman in this country who will stand up for those who do not have a voice.”

How extreme is Newman?

“Today’s scheduled execution of Paul Hill is not justice, but is another example of the judicial tyranny that is gripping our nation. A Florida judge denied Rev. Hill his right to present a defense that claimed that the killing of the abortionist was necessary to save the lives of the pre-born babies that were scheduled to be killed by abortion that day. Our system of justice is based upon ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ but in Rev. Hill’s case, there was no justice because the court prevented him from presenting the legal defense that his conduct was justifiable defensive action.

“There are many examples where taking the life in defense of innocent human beings is legally justified and permissible under the law. Paul Hill should have been given the opportunity to defend himself with the defense of his choosing in a court of law. [Operation Rescue West press release, 9/3/03, via Media Matters]

How about banned from Australia extreme?

Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, had been scheduled to begin a speaking tour in Australia on Friday. But immigration officials canceled his visa before he left the United States after Australian politicians raised concerns that he might encourage violence against abortion providers or women seeking the procedure.

He managed to board a flight from Los Angeles despite not having a valid visa but was detained by immigration officers at Melbourne Airport while trying to enter the country on Thursday.

[…]

Terri Butler, a Labor member of the Australian Parliament, had called for the government to revoke Mr. Newman’s visa this week. In a letter to Mr. Dutton, she cited passages from a book that Mr. Newman co-wrote that called for abortion doctors to be executed. [New York Times, 10/2/15]

Anti-abortion activists may spend the whole week screaming that they don’t want women punished for having an abortion. Just like they claim they aren’t against contraception when it serves their purposes, just like they claim they are against violence in the aftermath of each clinic bombing or doctor assassination.

What matters is their language when no one is watching. The stuff they say when they are surrounded by only true believers. As they continue to escalate the debate with inflammatory language. As they publish the names and home addresses of providers. As they unscientifically claim one contraception method after another is actually abortion.

It is about ending abortion. It is also about taking reproductive control away from women and forcing them back into the kitchen. If it was honestly all about abortion we live in a nation that is rich enough to practically eliminate elective abortions. Abortion could be nothing but a procedure that occurs only during the current “exceptions.” Rape, incest and the life of the mother or non-viable pregnancy. We could provide every woman of reproductive age contraception. We could turn abortion into an incredibly rare procedure, rather than one that is more common than anyone realizes. But there’s no slut shaming involved there, and it doesn’t serve to reinforce the patriarchy.

Trump says some insane shit. Trump takes some extreme positions. Don’t buy the lie that this (even though he did walk it back later) is one of them. This is a mainstream belief in the GOP. It just isn’t one they like outsiders to know about.

Pro-life – what does that mean? It seems to mean a lot of things to a lot of different people.

Some think it means to be concerned for the poor.

Others think it means to do away with the death penalty. Others think it means to be civil with people at all times.

But when anyone active in the pro-life movement, including myself, uses the term, it means one thing, and one thing only, namely, anti-abortion.

We are against murdering a baby in its mother’s womb.

So, if anyone uses the term “pro-life,” but does not mean anti-abortion, please do not use that term, but rather coin your own phrase.

Much of the confusion was caused years ago by a cardinal in Chicago, whose name I am happy to forget. His concept of pro-life included many things, like the spiritual and corporal works of mercy and almost any good deed one can think of. This concept is called “the seamless garment.”

It did much to weaken the pro-life movement and caused much confusion.

Rarely have I seen an anti-abortionist state it so bluntly. It isn’t about women’s health. It isn’t about what is best for the child. It isn’t about the sanctity of human life, it’s about the sanctity of the life of the fetus, nothing more. After they are born? Fuck ’em. Dare suggest that “pro-lifers” care about more than the embryo? Your name will be gladly forgotten.

Of course, embryos are much easier to care about apparently. Especially if your world view includes this:

Those who are in sympathy with the poor should research the abuses in the welfare system. One that I am familiar with is this: Women are encouraged to have many children. The more children they have, the more money they get. Often a woman will have three to five children to three to five different fathers.

Ahem. Citation fucking needed. Also, wait. If a few poor people play the system, then fuck ’em all? What about those that are not abusing the welfare system? Do they not exist? Oh, I know, they just need to work harder, is that it? You know, I understand people who are anti-abortion. I don’t agree with them, but I understand where they are coming from. But the above quote? That’s just ignorance. And prejudice. And unless I have the Karl Marx version of the Bible, it’s pretty far from the teachings of Jesus.

If Richard Ruth takes requests, I would love to read his thoughts on #blacklivesmatter. I’m sure they are well thought out and enlightening.

I have to admit however, that Mr. Ruth defeats me with his closing paragraph.

The Democrats are not concerned whether their clients lose their souls or not. They are more interested in getting their votes and their children’s future votes. The more kids they have the more votes they will eventually get.

Wait, what?!? If that was true, wouldn’t they be anti-abortion then? Let me see if I can break it down sentence by sentence and see what I am missing.

The Democrats are not concerned whether their clients lose their souls or not.

Good? The Democratic party is a political entity, not a religion. The United States is not a Christian nation. We do not have a Biblical government. The Democrats shouldn’t care about their members, voters, or “clients” imaginary ghost spirits anymore than they are concerned if their auras are out of wack or if the feng shui of their homes is out of alignment. (Do political parties have clients? Does he think Democratic field offices also provide abortion services?) Maybe the Republican party would find a more receptive audience for their fiscally conservative platform if they stopped worrying about their “client’s” souls? Pandering to members of a religion tends to turn off those who are not members of that religion. As much as the GOP would love to pretend “Christianity” is one monolithic religion, it is really a diverse collection of sects, all with contradictory beliefs. Some Christians are pro-choice. Some Christians are for LGBTQ rights. Wait, they aren’t real Christians? Maybe you aren’t the real Christian. How about we just stop trying to force others to follow our religious beliefs? Just an idea.

They are more interested in getting their votes and their children’s future votes.

That’s a bad thing? Once again, I would hope a political party cares more about votes than religion. *shrug*

The more kids they have the more votes they will eventually get.

Nope. Even sentence by sentence, my head explodes at this point. Did Mr. Ruth write a different letter raging against the Quiverfull movement and somehow edit them together? Can someone explain this to me?

My question/writing here is “How can we, as one nation under God, our United States, expect to prosper/have blessings when we are destroying our little ones in the womb by abortion?”

1954. That’s when “one nation under God” was added. That’s all for now, because that is a nonsensical question, along the lines of “How can we, as one town infested with unicorns, expect to prosper when we insist on locking gnomes into their hovels at night?”

There are so many telling signs of the downward, slippery slope we are on as a nation. Our economy’s $19 trillion deficit and so much bickering and upheaval in Washington, D.C.

Wait. That’s not “so many.” That is two. Both caused by pro-life Republicans, I might add.

How can we stand by and allow Planned Parenthood to sell aborted baby parts (lungs, brains, etc.) for a profit?

Lying is a sin. If you would have written this letter the day those deceptively edited videos came out, I would give you the benefit of the doubt. But it is March. Everyone who cares about the facts knows that those videos were cut to make it appear the Planned Parenthood representatives were saying things that they were not. All you had to do to prove that fact is watch the uncut videos. Add to that the investigations launched by various states into Planned Parenthood’s practices, all of which cleared the organization from any wrong-doing.

The Bible doesn’t say “the ends justify the means.” I’m sorry. No matter how badly you feel it should, it doesn’t. Lying is still a sin.

And you are a liar.

How can we remain a United States, one nation under God, if abortion – the destruction of “little ones” in the womb continues?

I’ll give you this Arnie, repeating the nonsensical question you opened with to close is better than whatever the fuck type of closing Mr. Ruth went with.

There is a major difference between being “too moderate to win the GOP presidential nomination” and actually being a moderate. John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio is indeed, frighteningly enough, more than likely a member of the former category. He may even be the most moderate member of the GOP to run for the 2016 nomination. What he certainly is not is a moderate.

Don’t get me wrong here, compared to the other candidates, Kasich sounds like he belongs in a different party at times. He used his faith as a reason to accept the ACA medicaid expansion, he doesn’t think deporting 11 million people is a realistic goal, and he believes climate change is taking place. Yay?

But check out all of his views. Sure, his faith caused him to go along with the medicaid expansion, but it also seems to color his opinions on all the issues. He believes the death penalty is compatible with Christianity, has a nice, fresh “A” rating from the NRA, seems to subscribe to the “just say no” school of drug policy. he supports tax cuts for “job creators” while he deceives people about the so called “death tax” that he wishes to eliminate. I’m not going to spell out all his views for ya, if you are interested, click the above link. I just want to point out one of his “moderate”moves as governor of Ohio, as seen on Wonkette today:

still drinking the delicious Kool-Aid flavor called “John Kasich is actually a moderate.”

We are here to tell you that flavor is garbage. That flavor is a lie. Witness Kasich’s latest super moderate action: defunding the ever living fuck out of Planned Parenthood in Ohio.

The bill strips state and some federal funding from health clinics that perform and promote “nontherapeutic abortions,” including Planned Parenthood facilities.

while the bill grants an exemption to abortions performed in cases of rape, incest and preserving the life of the mother, it jeopardizes the fate of other vital women’s health programs.For example, the $1.3 million in state grants that Planned

Parenthood is slated to lose was allocated toward HIV testing, cancer screenings and programs that help prevent domestic violence and infant mortality.

I really don’t give a shit about your views on abortion. Why? Because none of that fucking money was going towards abortions. Cause it isn’t about abortions. If it was, then the “pro-life” advocates would be screaming for universal access to long term contraception. You know, something that actually reduces abortions.

Until proven otherwise I have to assume this war against Planned Parenthood is just what it seems. The policy position that sexually active women do not deserve reproductive health care and cancer screenings because they are slutty slut sluts who should have kept their knees locked.

Well hey, Trump showed that the way to get noticed in this crowded field is by being the most vile example of humanity of the group, so it came as no surprise that Carly Fiorina would say something vile to get people talking, and since everyone and their mother on the right has latched on to those Planned Parenthood videos that were edited so deceptively that they make Expelled look like an honest film, it was no surprise that she brought them up. What was a bit of a shock was just how far she was willing to take the lie. From Salon (Only cause it’s Digby):

In that same debate when she bizarrely combined an answer about Iran with the Planned Parenthood controversy, she also challenged Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with a straight face, to watch a video showing “a fully formed fetus on the table its heart beating its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

Of course the debate moderator didn’t immediately ask her what the fuck video she was watching, or inquire about the new Planned Parenthood video apparently directed by Eli Roth. No, that would be doing a service to the electorate. Instead it fell to fact checkers which reach only a small fraction of the debate’s audience.

This claim was also thoroughly fact checked and proved her to be lying. None of the videos produced by the hoaxters who made the Planned Parenthood videos showed what she described.

Like Carly, or the GOP base for that matter, cares about what fact checkers say is true or false. What is truth anyway when you’re fighting those evil feminists and all atheists favorite fast food joint, Planned Parenthood?

But instead of apologizing or just quietly dropping the subject, Fiorina’s Super-PAC has created an ad featuring some footage like that she described in a bold doubling down on the falsehood:

A doctored video is being used to defend GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s false statements about a doctored video…

The video, according to a fact-check from Planned Parenthood, splices together five different video and audio sources from [the deceptive anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress]: an interview with a former tissue procurement technician, Holly O’Donnell; a photo of a Pennsylvania woman’s stillborn son that was used without permission; a video from a discredited anti-choice archive called the Grantham Collection; audio from a secret video of a doctor in Colorado; and audio from a surreptitiously recorded phone conversation with a man who works at another independent health-care organization in California.

The deceptive ad ends up showing a “fully formed fetus” with “legs kicking” (a stock image), an unrelated and completely out-of-context audio quote about a “heart beating,” and a mention of harvesting a brain.

The Grantham Collection is an anti-abortion archive which uses photos of still births or miscarriages, among other things, to deceive people into believing they are viewing aborted fetuses. According to Mother Jones, the group even claimed that a photo of basic medical tongs is an image of the tool used to pull apart the limbs of an aborted fetus.This stuff is so ghoulish you have to wonder what kind of person would spend their time making up such fantasies.

Of course, thanks to the infinite wisdom of our political system, Carly can reap all the positives effects of the video on the rabid right while maintaining perfect deniability in the face of moderate criticism since it was released by a pro-Fiorina SuperPAC. How long has our democracy been the laughing stock of the world anyway? But instead of playing the SuperPAC card, Carly instead played the “cancer survivor” card and then just continued to lie.

In response to a request for comment on the veracity of the video, Fiorina’s campaign didn’t take a strictly legal approach and say they have no relationship with the Super PAC and therefore cannot comment on the ad. Her campaign spokeswomen Sarah Isgur Flores replied to an inquiry from Mother Jones via email:

“Carly is a cancer survivor and doesn’t need to be lectured on women’s health by anyone. Over their long and factually incorrect letter, Planned Parenthood doesn’t and can’t deny they butchering babies and selling their organs [sic]. This is about the character of our nation.”

Actually, Planned Parenthood does and can deny “they butchering babies and selling their organs.” It is simply not true.

Unfortunately, Carly is discovering and taking advantage of a sad fact in American politics. If you lie, and keep lying, never admitting you lied, repetition and ignorance will find many people believing your lie as the truth.

Other campaigns have climbed down from similar claims about the videos. Fiorina and her allies have done no such thing. Three days after the debate, CARLY for America — the PAC that legally has to keep its distance from Fiorina’s actual campaign — put together a video that spliced the candidate’s answer with different clips. The viewer, hearing about the controversy but unaware of the original videos, might think that Fiorina nailed it.

That would be the idea. And it’s working. Think Progress interviewed some of her fans in South Carolina this week and they absolutely believe that Planned Parenthood is videotaping the butchering of babies to harvest their brains because this wonderful woman told them so.

Cleveland, Ohio resident Carol McDowell, who came to Fiorina’s event while on vacation in Charleston, said Fiorina’s debate performance really “won us over” — pointing to two of her friends. “I loved the Planned Parenthood response that she had. The things being done today — it’s gone way beyond just abortion and it needs to stop.”…

The message resonated with women in South Carolina. “Look, I got my first set of birth control pills from Planned Parenthood a long time ago,” said Lazar, who added that she is actually pro-choice. “I have nothing against them, but they should not be selling baby parts. As a country, we shouldn’t be doing that.”

It’s hard to believe anyone running for president believes she could get away with such blatant deceptions but never say Fiorina doesn’t have scads of chutzpah. She has refused to admit that she made a mistake and her Super PAC is now trying to cover her original lie with yet another lie. And even pro-choice GOP women are believing her. It’s enough to give you a migraine.

This is disgraceful. This is a nightmare for low income women and their access to health care. And it is politics as usual in the United States.

I have to admit, I was so caught up shopping for a gay wedding present for the totes-legal-now-that-the-Supremes-said-that-everyone-needed-to-stop-kung-fu-fighting-long-enough-to-get-gay-married-everybody-even-puppies-goats-llamas-cable-news-shows-websites-and-straight-men-except-not-Jared-from-Subway-cause-seriously-fuck-that-guy impending nuptials joining The Wonkette and The Rachel Maddow Show in the bonds of holy matrimony, wondering what happens on the honeymoon for a website/cable news show marriage, who would get pregnant, and if they would give birth to little podcasts and oh my god this sentence ran on so long I got lost.

I understand, Rachel. You are always trying to get Republicans to come on your show, and those that do are always treated fairly. Perhaps in the not too distant future (na na na), when elected Republicans can once again govern like adults without fear of being primaried for the sin of compromise, more members of the GOP will realize appearing on your show is not like a progressive on The O’Reilly Factor. Of course, for that possibility to, well, be possible, you can’t exactly go around calling Republican candidates for President “terrible people,” now can you?

But I can. Especially when the Republican in question actually is a terrible person. In fact, one of the most pressing questions I hope to answer in my 17 part on-going series, Getting to Know the Trip, is if there is a non-terrible person in the field. (Preliminary answer? No. They’re all pretty terrible.) Things need to change if we have any hope of reclaiming our democracy and building it back up to something other than a world wide joke. One thing that really needs to change is that the press needs to live up to the responsibility the Founding Fathers gave it by enshrining Freedom of the Press in the Bill of Rights. The only bias a news anchor/reporter should have is an overwhelming bias towards reality. Stop covering politics like sports and stop being afraid of offending people if a political party takes a stance in opposition to objective fact.

While I am going to save most points for when I get to Jeb in my Goat Countdown, hearing Rachel last night compelled me to let you all know a few reasons why yes, Jeb Bush is a terrible person. And we’ll start off with the two words that should immediately disqualify him from the Presidency:

Terry Schiavo

Raise your hand if you remember this ghoul trying to score political points by reinserting the feeding tube into a women in a persistent vegetative state, forcing her to “live,” against the wishes of her husband (and guardian) and, if you believe her husbands word, and I have no reason not to, against her own wishes as well. Die with dignity? Not with Jeb on duty:

She had left no will. No written instructions. She was 26. To try to determine what she would have wanted, there was a trial, in the Pinellas County courtroom of circuit judge George Greer, in which Michael Schiavo relayed what she had told him in passing about what her wishes would be in this sort of scenario. Others did, too. She also had next to no chance of recovery, according to doctors’ testimony. Greer cited “overwhelming credible evidence” that Terri Schiavo was “totally unresponsive” with “severe structural brain damage” and that “to a large extent her brain has been replaced by spinal fluid.” His judgment was that she would not have wanted to live in her “persistent vegetative state” and that Michael Schiavo, her husband and her legal guardian, was allowed to remove her feeding tube.

But that was before the Jeb signal went up!

So on October 15, 2003, Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube came out. Judge’s orders. She would die within two weeks. This stage of the case looks in retrospect like the start of a test. Just how much power did Jeb Bush have?

HB 35E was filed after 8 at night on October 20. Many lawmakers already were gone for the day. Gelber, the state representative from Miami, put his suit back on at his apartment in Tallahassee and hustled back to the Capitol. Fellow Democrats gathered around as the attorney and former prosecutor began to read the bill one of Bush’s staff attorneys had helped to write.“Authority for the Governor to Issue a One-time Stay …”

“The governor can’t just change an order of the court,” Gelber explained this month. “It’s one of the most elemental concepts of democracy: The governor is not a king.”

But the governor is Jeb! He’s better than a king. Letters poured into his office, each attempting to suck his dick a little bit better than the previous one. Oh, it must have been good to be Jeb in those heady days. Unfortunately, those pesky courts, you know, the ones who had earlier ruled in favor of Terri’s right to die with dignity? Yeah, those ones. Well, they were about to meddle around and ruin poor Jeb’s good day.

Back in Florida, though, the courts were focused not so much on what was “morally obligatory” but more on what was legally mandatory.

A circuit judge ruled Bush’s “Terri’s Law” unconstitutional.

Well, that’s only a circuit court. Wait til it gets to the Florida Supreme Court. They’ll see it Jeb’s way, I just know it.

The seven state supreme court judges took less than a month to dismiss unanimously “Terri’s Law.”

Oh. Well, that was embarrassing. Unanimous? Damn. The only thing worse would be if the Chief Justice released a written smackdown that Foster could mark up with bolding and italics on his blog, in this article.

“If the Legislature with the assent of the Governor can do what was attempted here,” chief justice Barbara Pariente wrote in her ruling, “the judicial branch would be subordinated to the final directive of the other branches. Also subordinated would be the rights of individuals, including the well-established privacy right to self-determination. No court judgment could ever be considered truly final and no constitutional right truly secure, because the precedent of this case would hold to the contrary. Vested rights could be stripped away based on popular clamor. The essential core of what the Founding Fathers sought to change from their experience with English rule would be lost …”

But that was like, forever ago. Surely Jeb has learned from his attempt to destroy the system of checks and balances to score cheap pro-life points. No matter how many letters from supporters he received over the matter, he had to hear the overwhelming outcry in opposition to his privacy and self-determination shredding power grab. Right?

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday he had no regrets about fighting to keep Terri Schiavo alive, addressing the mid-2000s controversy on his second trip to New Hampshire this year.

“I don’t think I would have changed anything,” he told New Hampshire business leaders at St. Anselm College’s Politics and Eggs breakfast in response to a question about whether he would have handled things differently with the benefit of hindsight.

Public shaming would be an effective way to regulate the “irresponsible behavior” of unwed mothers, misbehaving teenagers and welfare recipients, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) argued in his 1995 book Profiles in Character.

In a chapter called “The Restoration of Shame,” the likely 2016 presidential candidate made the case that restoring the art of public humiliation could help prevent pregnancies “out of wedlock.”

One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful.

Bush points to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, in which the main character is forced to wear a large red “A” for “adulterer” on her clothes to punish her for having an extramarital affair that produced a child, as an early model for his worldview. “Infamous shotgun weddings and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter are reminders that public condemnation of irresponsible sexual behavior has strong historical roots,” Bush wrote.

After all, we’re talking about a man who once put the life of a disabled woman who’d been raped at risk by intervening legally to force her to carry her child to term — a move a Florida court later found illegal.

We’re talking about a man who, as governor, signed a controversial abortion ban into law — and praised a similar measure passed by the House on Wednesday as “humane and compassionate.”

We’re talking about a man who likes to defend his anti-choice record by saying “the most vulnerable in our society need to be protected” — even though he’s shown he’s not above playing politics with a child’s body, once going so far as governor as appealing the decision of a court that ruled a 13-year-old girl could have an abortion when her pregnancy posed an extreme risk to her health.

We’re talking about someone who likes to talk a big game about how taxpayer dollars should never be used to fund abortions — even though he slipped millions in taxpayer dollars to Florida “crisis pregnancy centers” notorious for lying to and misleading women about their reproductive health choices. (This, in a state where 73 percent of counties have no abortion providers and crisis centers may be the only places women have to turn for the medical care they desperately need.)

And let’s not forget that Jeb once held $1 million in family planning grants hostage until the programs receiving the money agreed not to discuss birth control at all.

And since I want to save most of the ammo for my 6k or so word introduction of Jeb that is still probably a couple months away, I will leave you with this recent little gaffe. Wasn’t Jeb supposedly the establishment candidate who wouldn’t make stupid gaffes? From Correct the Record, though you can find it just about anywhere:

I know you were trying to be nice, Ms. Maddow, but he is a terrible person.

Now I’m going to do a knife hit to get the taste of yet another bush out of my mouth. Have a good weekend, I’ll try to get a few posts up during the weekend.

For those interested, here is the order for the next few parts of Getting to Know the Trip

Bobby Jindal

Lindsey Graham

Rick Perry

Jim Gilmore

George Pataki

I will try to have Gov. Jindal up on Monday, although his is going to be so much fun that it may take til Wednesday. I mean, this is a Governor who has pissed off just about every single voter in his state in his hopeless attempt to win the presidential nomination. A legitimate answer to the question “What is wrong with the United State’s method of electing a President?” would be simply pointing at Jindal. He is a guy who got himself elected Governor of a state solely as a stepping stone to higher office, and every single decision he makes as Governor is informed by his higher goal. Yes, it will be fun.

After I finish out the under 2% gang I’ll make a schedule for the other candidates. I’m thinking of going by national poll numbers, which is meaningless, but hell, Fox News thinks they mean something, so why not? We’ll see.

If you have a few minutes, I urge you to read the whole piece on Jeb and the Terri Schiavo over at Politico, titled “Jeb ‘Put Me Through Hell’.” It’s worth checking out, if only to remind you of the situation.

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About the Author

Described as "intelligent but self-destructive," Foster Disbelief spent his twenties furiously attempting to waste his potential in a haze of religion and heroin. Science and atheism allowed him to escape his twin addictions and he now spends his days attempting to make the most of his three remaining brain cells.